


hydroglyphics: the nile isn't just a river in egypt

by submersive



Series: hallelujah junction [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/submersive/pseuds/submersive
Summary: Hormones are shit and if Kei could please skip the acne phase on top of having really bad eyesight and a raging inexplicable urge to mount Tadashi at all times, Kei would really appreciate it.
Series: hallelujah junction [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859551
Comments: 17
Kudos: 211
Collections: GHFOAT (greatest haikyuu fics of all time)





	hydroglyphics: the nile isn't just a river in egypt

**Author's Note:**

> references to the main fic. tsukishima's pov.

They were _not_ friends.

The five of them, that is. As in Kei, Tadashi, Hitoka, Shrimp, and King.

Okay, _Tadashi_ was his friend, and Tadashi has the unfortunate habit of hoarding strays then calling them friends—case in point, Kei—so now Kei, through a combination of Tadashi’s sheer willpower and the annoying forced proximity that Karasuno coerced them into, is stuck with these idiots.

Hell, Kei didn’t even realise that Tadashi was that close of a friend until suddenly he’s a 16 year old high school student being swindled by said boy into tutoring the dumbest combination of shitbrick 1 and shitbrick 2 he’s ever met.

Really, how _in the everloving shit_ did these two even make it to high school?

And more importantly, how did Kei not realise Tadashi has that kind of power over him?

When did Tadashi even _become_ the kind of person who can convince Kei into doing something as idiotic as teaching these dumbasses how to study?

Kei hates this bullshit and he wants out.

-

Kei is seventeen _out of nowhere_ and he’s fondly watching Tadashi berate Shitbrick 1 and Shitbrick 2 in one corner of the volleyball court as Captain Ennoshita looks on, when it dawns on him.

_Holy fucking shit._

Fondly? When has he ever felt fondness?

Holy shit. Since when had he been in love with _Yamaguchi Tadashi_?

And Tadashi? _Really_? The boy who shoved a popsicle down Kei’s back when they were 7? 

The same boy who once accidentally gave himself a wedgie through _a doorknob_?

 _THAT_ Tadashi?

Why wasn’t Kei informed?

Since when can Kei fall in love even?

Holy fuck, was _Kei_ Shitbrick 3?

-

Kei spends the entirety of his senior year just boiling in his own frustration.

It’s not really _all_ him. Probably.

It’s the hormones. Definitely hormones.

Hormones are shit and if Kei could please skip the acne phase on top of having really bad eyesight and a _raging_ inexplicable urge to mount Tadashi _at all times_ , Kei would really appreciate it.

Tadashi who took leaps and bounds and made himself captain.

 _Tadashi_ who keeps trying Kei’s patience with every clever strategic bullshit that spouts out of his mouth when the king and their coach are discussing the next game.

He’s always known how fucking capable Tadashi is.

Shitbrick 3 is going to die.

-

They lose the nationals in their final year.

It’s _okay_ . Kei is _okay_ . It’s _just_ volleyball.

Kei is also okay when they steal his brother’s sake and get really fucking drunk _for the first time_.

Then things are _really_ okay.

Hitoka should not have left them on their own because carrying a semiconscious King and following his drunken instructions to his own house is not how Kei pictured his final day as a High School division volleyball player to go this way.

A neighbour peers at them from their window and Kei raises two middle fingers high up in the air because he has a drunken King on him and he would like for nosy people to kindly fuck off.

“Are you _sure_ no one’s in there?” Tadashi asks when they drunkenly step into the threshold of the king’s giant mansion that Kei has never been to despite the five of them being in Kei’s house enough that Kei’s mom had assigned each of them a _chore_ for dinner preparation in the weeks leading to every exam season since second year.

“His mother is dead.” The shrimp says as he fondles their lightweight setter’s pants to look for his house keys.

“May she rest in peace,” Tadashi chimes in automatically. Kei’s dumb pavlovian brain echoes the sentiment in the exact same moment and in the exact same tone.

He truly fucking resents these assholes.

“His dad left him. He lives alone because his sister is in Tokyo.” Hinata recites mechanically, his tongue peeking out as he expertly maneuvered the lock on King’s gigantic gate being that he's the _only_ one among them who's been in the house. “He started living alone since his grandfather died in, like, junior high.”

What did Kageyama even _do_ in his past life? Commit mass murder? Torture kittens?

Kei bodily throws the sad bastard onto the nearest sofa when they finally get into the surprisingly neat house.

There is an altar taking up a majority of one wall and Kageyama Tobio’s grandparents and who Kei assumes was his mother smile at him from the frames.

The king must be _loaded_ from insurance money, the poor fuck.

They all pass out in the living room after Hinata took some sheets and pillows from somewhere upstairs and gave them one each, before disappearing upstairs again.

Kei can hear some sliding doors being opened then closed.

“He only has one guest futon,” Hinata explains quietly after he’s back holding said one futon.

He unfolds it on the ground, takes the extra pillow he’s thrown over King’s body earlier, lays down, and curls himself up with a sheet.

Kei, who has taken the leather ottoman so Tadashi can have the other settee, falls asleep to the vision of Tadashi throwing a blanket over Tobio’s slumped form on the couch across him.

-

He wakes up the next day to the wonderful sounds of Hinata Shouyou retching into the nearest toilet with the door left open behind him.

‘@Hitoka _Paracetamol_ ,’ he texts into their dumb group chat that had first started as a way for them to schedule meet ups for the team, then progressed into a place where they yell about the idiotic shit their juniors get up to, then became whatever it is _now_.

Kei gets one more second of peace, just enough to send his live location to the chat, before he clambering up from the ottoman, running to where Hinata is, shoving Hinata’s face away from where he’s flopped his cheek on the toilet bowl, and barfing into it himself.

Hinata wordlessly hands him the toilet roll once he's done emptying his stomach and they just sit on the cool tiled floor until Tadashi finds them some ten minutes later with a smile on his face like he hadn’t drunk them all under the table the night before.

-

The most ironic thing is that the first person to find out about the Olympic-sized torch that Kei is _still_ carrying for his childhood best friend is the king Olympian Kageyama Tobio himself.

-

Kei is looking for one of his goddamn threadbare dinosaur shirts in his dilapidated apartment one quiet afternoon when he abruptly remembers that said goddamn dinosaur shirt was what the shrimp had been wearing during their group phone call two nights prior.

When the fuck did that shirt even get into Shouyou’s gremlin fingers?

The answer dawns onto him a year later when he catches himself throwing his beloved merino wool scarf at Tobio just as he’s about to walk towards the check-in counters bound for Italy.

“?” Says Tobio’s surprised expression when he pulls the wool away from where it fell on his ugly face.

Then Kei suddenly remembers with increasing _horror_ that at one point in the second year, he's leant them his own clothes to change into after they were drenched by a sudden downpour on their way to his house.

These gremlins never really returned those clothes, did they?

“Just take it, you ungrateful shit.”

-

Hitoka is in New York. Shouyou is in Brazil. Tobio is in Italy.

And Tsukishima Kei, shitbrick that he is, just travelled for _two fucking hours_ by bus from Sendai to Tokyo after work just so he can bring Tadashi his fucking cake for the Birthday Eve celebration because that’s what Shitbricks like him do, apparently.

Do really stupid shit.

-

He is in the middle of settling in for the night after a long day of hammering his thesis statement into submission _and_ hammering Koganegawa’s blocking skills into submission when his phone rings.

“—And he’s not talking to me now because I tried to set him up with The Grand King and he’s not talking to _me_ , Saltyshima. _Me_. I’m his best friend and I think I really fucked up. What happens to our tally now? Does that mean I have to give him victory points? What if he never talks to me again. Can you call him and tell—”

Kei ends the call.

Then he tries to ignore it when it keeps on buzzing from continuous texts on the pillow.

Jesus fuck.

 _Fine_ , he texts, hating his life as he looks for Tobio’s name in his address book.

-

Another ironic thing: the first person Kei thought to call after Tadashi giddily shared about his plans to find a ring for Hitoka is Tobio.

Cool calm collected Tsukishima Kei has left the building and Shitbrick 3 is back and he is going to accept the job offer in London’s Natural History Museum to be the curator for fossils because he does not want to help Tadashi look for a ring for when Hitoka gets back in Japan in March.

Shitbrick 3 will uproot his life because he is a sad pining cowardly bastard.

“I know you don’t need my help, asshole,” Shitbrick 1’s stupid voice snaps from the other end of the phone. “But I’m offering anyway because you’re my friend and that’s what friends do.”

And when did Tobio, Shitbrick 1 extraordinaire, even become his friend?

Because holy shit, he _is_.

What kind of insidious bullshit is this?

-

There are 23 fucking missed calls on _Line_ and Kei almost wants to block Tadashi because the fucker’s persistent and doesn’t give a shit about the time difference between Tokyo and London.

-

“I’m sorry,” is what Hitoka says out of nowhere when they’re on the phone after Tadashi probably rage-quitted on him, “I didn’t know until now.”

“Why? It’s not your fault. Just don’t tell him.”

“I’m still sorry, Kei, you’re one of my best friends and I don’t want to hurt you.”

Why the _hell_ did he think it was a good idea to tell Hitoka about this anyway? He needs tea and a cigarette - no, _cigarettes;_ about ten of them and preferably at the same time.

“You didn’t. It’s me. It’s my problem,” he says as he bends his knees a little so he doesn’t hit his head on the low hanging arch that separates his new kitchen from his new living room. "Just don't tell him."

“Okay, I won’t tell him. He’s stupid about these things anyway. We’re still friends right?”

The kettle that previously lived in the Kageyama household before Tobio had squandered it off for Kei’s first apartment is currently refusing to succumb to Kei’s current request of actually _boiling_ water.

“Yes. But you better live the happiest life you’ve ever lived, got it?”

The fucking kettle has _one job_ . Kei even bought a 110V-220V converter _just_ so it can work and it won’t work properly.

He tries not to evaluate why he even brought it with him to London in the first place.

Hitoka is sniffling when she promises him that they will.

-

“How is it that I fly for more than four hours after winning MVP for FIVB Volleyball World League and the first thing you want me to do is carry another sofa?” Tobio asks, his voice muffled by the arm of the two-seater they’re heaving up four flights of stairs because Kei’s flat in London was built during the Victorian era and seemed to have stubbornly _stayed there_.

“You whiny bitch,” Kei mutters with a grunt. “Stop bragging and pull your weight.”

He offers Tobio a beer once the sofa is finally in the smallest living room known to man.

It’s the least he can do.

Especially since he sleeps on the sofa and doesn’t comment upon seeing the little old kettle sitting innocently on the marble counter.

-

By the way, why _the fuck_ did this two time Olympic multi-medalist and apparently MVP of FIVB World League shitbrick choose to stay on his new couch instead of like, booking a hotel room?

He can barely even fit in the couch, fuck’s sake.

-

“Tsukishima Kei, brother mine, would you mind telling me, your loving elder brother, why in the everloving _shit_ am I the last one to find out that you’re in the United fucking Kingdom?”

Akiteru’s voice really does seem to have that wonderful Tsukishima trait of steadily ascending in volume when they’re distressed.

“Sorry. They needed me to start immediately. Situation’s urgent.”

“How are fossilised dinosaurs urgent? They’ve been in the ground for literally thousands of years! I go on my _honeymoon_ and you couldn’t even _wait_ —”

Kei passes his phone to Tobio who’s looking at him wide eyed as they stroll along Southbank on their way to Tate Modern so Tobio can buy an Andy Warhol coffee table book for a teammate before he has to fly back to Italy.

“Hello?” Shitbrick 1 says into the receiver while he’s glaring at Kei. “Yes, sorry, Aki-kun. I told Kei to go. It was urgent. How's obasan doing? Please send her my thanks for the crocheted scarf.”

A fucking sk8r boi wannabe rushes between them and didn’t even fucking mutter an _excuse me_.

Kei fucking hates the youth.

-

He has Hitoka and Tadashi on a video call while waiting for Tobio and Shouyou to show up on his tv — the shitbricks are representing Japan together in the Olympics _again —_ when it dawns on him just how far they’ve all come.

They started in a small damn town, led a team, shared Tobio’s toilet with Shouyou to vomit into, and now Kei's in London _voluntarily_ wearing a jersey that has Tobio's name on it while Tadashi is wearing a shirt that has Shouyou's and Hitoka's in a Karasuno jacket.

The fuck is his life?

**Author's Note:**

>   * Fun fact: my pal and I got lost _for hours_ in London's Natural History Museum looking for a 26-metre long Diplodocus skeleton only to find out that it had already been taken down. RIP Dippy.
>   * Another fun fact: i stayed in a 4th storey flat near Queensway for short while and the building didn't have lifts.
>   * [Here's how that ominous stairwell looked like](https://imgur.com/hznpmaB) in the evening (photo's mine). Much Ju-on, very Samara.
> 



End file.
